JUNE 30, 2019 • THE WEEK 67their works of 1909, for Gandhi, the
means was intrinsically linked with
the ends and nonviolence was the
guiding mantra. Savarkar, however,
believed in self-assertion of the na-
tion, which many a time could have
no other outlet than a violent, armed
one. He derided the pusillanimity of
ahimsa and all his life believed that
militarisation was a prerequisite for a
strong country.
As the fi rst leader to vociferously
demand nothing short of complete
freedom at a time the Congress
was still petitioning the British for
concessions, Savarkar articulated
his vision of a grand constitutional
republic for India, way back in 1908.
It was to be a bicameral parliament
akin to Britain’s with native princes
who helped the freedom struggle as
members of the upper house and
directly elected representatives in the
lower house.
For spearheading violence, polit-
ical assassinations and smuggling
arms and bombs into India, Savarkar
was held in London in 1910, charged
with sedition, extradited, unfairly
tried and condemned to the dark
dungeons of Kala Pani for two life
terms equaling 50 long years. Gandhi
was nowhere on the national scene
when Savarkar was deported to the
Andamans. But by the time he was
repatriated to an Indian jail in 1921,
Savarkar had to contend with a
Gandhi who had not only returned to
India but also managed to take com-
plete control of the Congress and the
nationalist struggle, especially after
the death of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in
1920.
Savarkar watched with horror,
from the confi nes of his prison, the
dangerous communal fi re that Gan-
dhi was stoking by linking religion
with politics through his Khilafat
agitation and yoking it to Indian
freedom. Towards the end of World
War I, many Indian Muslims, par-
ticularly the Sunnis, demanded theover a decade in the dreaded Cellular Jail of the Anda-
mans. Th ey were both interestingly self-conscious Hindus,
though their approach diff ered. Both advocated Hindi as
a lingua franca of a linguistically divided India. Both wrote
books in the same year, 1909, that were banned by the
British—Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj and Savarkar’s First War of
Indian Independence on the 1857 uprising. Th ey were not
only political rivals, but intellectual opponents, too.
Th ere is an allusion that Gandhi had Savarkar in mind
while writing Hind Swaraj, while Savarkar’s 1923 treatise
Essentials of Hindutva was undoubtedly his fi rst major
salvo against Gandhi whose pacifi st philosophy he was
totally opposed to. Th ough swaraj was the goal of both
DINODIA